Themes

Question

After downloading the  SDK for the Micro framework and seeing that instead of just one simulator like the other SDK it has 3 different kinds which is great and all, even though the touch simulator seams to be a resource hog for some reason and its very slow and laggy on this Quad 3.0 CPU with 4gigs memory on Vista Ultimate, but thats not really the question.

On different sideshow platforms, the three simulators, and even the one for windows mobile, each has a different color 'theme', such as the SDK is nice and blue, and how you can switch the Touch Simulator from white to black, and even how the Mobile SideShow is a plain white background. I was told once that this is controlled my the manufacture or the sideshow device.

The problem is, is there a way i can see what the 'theme' is?
I need to have all my text black in order to see it on SideShow for Windows Mobile, but yet it is more readable if white on the SDK Simulators, and then the Touch Simulator can do both white and dark backgrounds, but yet if i switch to one i can read my text anymore, and who knows what colors other devices are using.

Is there away to have it to where my text can be shown? Like does each SideShow device has a default color setting?
Or is there a automatic way of using a white text on a black background? or Black on a white background?
I know i could add it on the menu to do it manually, but if that menu text color is wrong and you cant read it to switch it then that wont work.

any ideas?

Answer 1

Robert,

We've actually got some documentation that touches on this subject; it's located in the User Experience Guidelines section, specifically here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970173(VS.85).aspx.

The general guidance is to utilize the default text colors whenever possible, but if you do want to change the text colors you should also send a custom background to ensure that the text will be visible.  Unfortunately there is no standard way to get the text color information from the device.

Dan

Answer 2

Well i remember asking about this back when the Sideshow for Mobile phones was released becouse that at lest from my end was is just a big empty white space of nothingness, unlike the nice shiny default blues on the emulators with the SDK. At the time i wanted to replace the background with a image, (a album cover at the time) but I was told then that this (background images, and 'themes') is controlled from the devices and those who designed them and could not be modified by the gadget. The link you sent me says that background images can be changed, is this something new that was added when the micro .net stuff started coming out? If so is there some nice documentation out there that shows what all has been added or even better, some example code? When i first heard of it i thought the micro .net framework was more to added touch screen support than anything else. (The touch screen emulator though runs just awful on my Quad-Core 3.0 under vista ultimate which is to bad i was wanting to use it my 7inch touch screen) 

I ended up for now taking some of the code that comes with the Studio 2008 templete that seams to pull the default color from the gadgets registry and if there is no registry it sets it to white as default with a option of changing the color in the context menu.

Answer 3

Yes, you are correct in that the device has to implement that functionality.  For the Windows Mobile Developer Preview, that wasn't included.  I should also clarify that SCF only allows you to specify backgrounds for "content" pages.  Take a look at the bg and bgfit attributes here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms744077(VS.85).aspx.  Simply send down the image you want to use as a separate content item, and then provide the content ID of that image as an attribute on your content page, and it should be shown in the background.  Since this is part of the SCF spec, I believe it has been in the .NET Micro Framework SDK since the beginning.

Sorry to hear the touch screen emulator isn't working too well for you--this does sound vaguely familiar, so I'll check with the team to see if we have any tips to speed it up.

Dan

Answer 4

Robert,

On the simulator speed issue, here's something to try: adjusting the SystemClockFrequency in the emulatorconfig file (specifically, TouchSimulator.emulatorconfig).  Set it to a large number, and see if that helps performance.

Essentially, the emulator is trying to throttle back to emulate the slower ARM CPUs, but this can sometimes behave in an odd way with desktop CPUs.

Dan

Answer 5

I played with the numbers with no luck, watching it in Task Manager, Touch Simulator is easily taking up 25+ percent of my CPU usage at any time, with our without my gadget running.

Answer 6

Well i remember asking about this back when the Sideshow for Mobile phones was released becouse that at lest from my end was is just a big empty white space of nothingness, unlike the nice shiny default blues on the emulators with the SDK. At the time i wanted to replace the background with a image, (a album cover at the time) but I was told then that this (background images, and 'themes') is controlled from the devices and those who designed them and could not be modified by the gadget. The link you sent me says that background images can be changed, is this something new that was added when the micro .net stuff started coming out? If so is there some nice documentation out there that shows what all has been added or even better, some example code? When i first heard of it i thought the micro .net framework was more to added touch screen support than anything else. (The touch screen emulator though runs just awful on my Quad-Core 3.0 under vista ultimate which is to bad i was wanting to use it my 7inch touch screen) 

I ended up for now taking some of the code that comes with the Studio 2008 templete that seams to pull the default color from the gadgets registry and if there is no registry it sets it to white as default with a option of changing the color in the context menu.

Does the bold part of your comment imply you are running the touch screen emulator on laptop? If that's true, then try it on a desktop PC. The touch emulator is developed upon .NET MF SDK 3.0 and there is a known issue in .NET MF SDK about measuring the clock frequecncy to simulate slow ARM CPU, it assumes CPU frequency is constant however on laptops it is NOT true.

Answer 7

Nope, its running on a Intel Q6600 Quad OverClocked to 3.0GHz with 4gigs of ram on a desktop.

Ok so lets say its emulating the ARM correctly, is it supposed to be this slow of a emulator?
The other emulators, which ill assume is also emulating the same ARM speed are both running smooth taking up no space. But start this one up and its like woh +25% CPU usage and lagfest.